Cyprus reported two coronavirus deaths on Tuesday, with an increase in new daily cases to 355, yet a small drop in hospitalisations to 184.
The health ministry said in its daily bulletin that two men, aged 37 and 77, died due to Covid-19 complications, raising the August death toll to 62 and to 486 since the outbreak started. The average age of all deaths is 77 years.
OKYPY hospitals’ spokesman Charalambos Charilaou told CyBC radio earlier on Tuesday that the average age of patients being treated for coronavirus was now 57 and continued to drop at a worrying rate, mainly due to a slow rollout of vaccinations.
Hospitalisations dropped to 184, twelve fewer from the day before, of whom 72 are critical, down four from Monday.
Of these, 35 remain intubated, three less than the previous day and 85% of hospital patients are unvaccinated, up from 83%.
A further 14 patients are considered post-Covid, having recovered from the virus, but remain intubated and in a serious state.
Some 52,454 PCR and antigen rapid tests were conducted during the past 24 hours, 500 more than the day before.
Test positivity rate stable at 0.68%
The 355 new infections, 22 more than on Monday, and the total tests kept the benchmark ‘test positivity’ rate at 0.68%, marginally higher than 0.64% and below the high-risk threshold of 1%.
The total number of all SARS-CoV-2 infections during the past 17 months rose to 112,021.
Of the new cases, 57 were identified through contact tracing linked to earlier infections, four passengers tested positive in PCR tests at Larnaca and Paphos airports, and 93 were diagnosed from private initiative and hospital tests.
A further 132 cases were identified from private rapid tests at labs and pharmacies, and 67 were positive from the free national testing programme, available only to those vaccinated or recovered from earlier infections.
Of these, 28 were in Nicosia, 24 in Limassol, 10 in Larnaca, 3 in the Famagusta region and one in Paphos.
Only one of 654 tests of staff and residents at retirement homes was positive.
None of the 246 random rapid tests on passengers arriving at both airports were negative, nor were any of the 120 tests of guests sponsored by the hoteliers’ association.
